Adam Smith and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the Vices of the Marketplace
Adam Smith and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the Vices of the Marketplace
In this chapter, I want to accomplish two main tasks. First, I want to outline Smith's views on the marketplace and its potential to contribute to the erosion of both natural sympathy and social virtue as well as his suggestions for how these negative effects can and should be mitigated. Second, I want to supplement Smith's suggestions for the latter by contrasting his views on sympathy and virtue with Jean-Jacques Rousseau's views on compassion and virtue as they are developed in his Emile or On Education. In particular, I want to supplement Smith’s suggestions by contrasting his view that self-interest must be tempered by sympathy and virtue with Rousseau's view that self-interest or, more precisely, amour-propre must be sublimated into compassion and virtue through a process of careful habituation, and then by indicating how Rousseau’s view on the latter might impact Smith's vision of proper education.
Keywords: Adam Smith, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, sympathy, education, amour-propre
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